Performance hit?

Re: Performance hit?

I cant even get folding to work as my screensaver. You would think they would make it idiot proof. I've given up on folding wich is rediculous but it just wont work easily enough and i dont have the time to spend trying to figure out whats wrong with it.

 

Re: Re: Performance hit?

Have you tried just using the graphical client? It's about as idiot-proof as you're likely to find.

Shakespeare> If you're worried about the performance hit, try going into the advanced preferences and reducing the CPU % that folding uses. That should help your computer to run a little smoother.

 

Re: Performance hit?

It depends on a lot of factors. But lets look at what it means for a process to have a low priority.

At work, I've got a 1.4 GHz Intel machine running folding at the lowest priority. For a test, I just made a program that loops continuously, hogging the processer. This program runs at normal priority. When I run folding and my test program simulteneously, the folding CPU usage goes down to zero and the test programs usage goes up to nearly 100%. However, folding will occasionally "rob" a few stray CPU cycles causing its CPU usage to temporarily jump to 3-7%. Likely these are cycles that my test program is dropping, but thats not certain.

From this test, I conclude that folding may "sip" some CPU usage, even when the processor is being pegged out by other processes. I have found the results to be slightly more pronounced on OS X.

We must also take into account memory usage. Folding gets loaded into memory when it starts, using some RAM. Also, it is always running, meaning that it is likely to be swapped back into memory very shortly after it is swapped out. This can be a problem on machines with little memory. This could slow a system down some.

Just some considerations you may want to take into account.

Taft

 

Re: Re: Re: Performance hit?

Yes I suggest the graphical client for total beginners and the console for the more advanced (even though the scripts are *very* easy to run)

Folding might *sip* 1-4 % at totally random intervals, but it is temporary.